This chapter is from the book

Final Cut Express's designers have carefully organized the tools you use to configure settings and preferences. The goal of this organization is to make it much easier for editors using the most common hardware and video formats to configure FCE—and much more difficult for users to unintentionally modify individual settings within a preset configuration.

This chapter explains Easy Setups—FCE's streamlined configuration feature—and then walks you through your preference options in the User Preferences and System Settings windows.

FCE's preset principle is balanced by a highly customizable interface. At the end of this chapter you'll learn about options for reconfiguring Final Cut Express's interface to complement your personal working preferences.

Easy Setup: Capture, device control, and sequence settings are all organized into preset configurations, and these Audio/Video presets are grouped into master presets called Easy Setups. For more information, see the next section, "Using Easy Setups."

User Preferences and System Settings: Unlike your Easy Setup preset, which is largely dictated by your hardware and video formats, a preference is a setting that specifies how you want to work with your media in Final Cut Express. FCE preferences are divided between two windows: User Preferences and System Settings. The settings in these windows affect all your Final Cut Express projects.

How to "Trash Your Prefs"

FCE has made setting up preferences simple, but you still may find that you need to delete your FCE preferences files (or "trash your prefs") to force FCE to restore all your program settings to their default values. You will need to delete three files:

First, go to User/Library/Preferences/ and remove the file called com.apple.FinalCutExpress.plist.

Then go to User/Library/Preferences/Final Cut Express User Data/ and remove the other two preferences files, called Final Cut Express HD 3.0 Preferences and Final Cut Express POA Cache.

After deleting the files, relaunch Final Cut Express with all your external hardware on and connected. You'll see the Choose Setup dialog box. Here's your chance to reset your preferences from scratch.